A review by starness
The Lightness by Emily Temple

3.0

I’m still uncertain of my feelings for this book, I felt like it started off strong, I was immediately intrigued and thought the concept interesting. A girl heads to a meditation retreat high up in the mountains, to search for answers surrounding the disappearance of her father. She becomes mesmerised then befriends three girls attending the summer camp, they slowly form a strange bond, she eventually uncovers their plans for enlightenment lead by the mysterious leader of the group revealing her ultimate goal of levitation. Immediately you are aware that something occurs to one of the girls and the story unravels from there, everything is shrouded in this eerie mysterious quality from the beginning there is an ominous foreshadowing but it takes a long time for the ultimate reveal, for some reason the book felt disjointed at times as the book delves deeply into Buddhist philosophy, the book infuses many elements of this into the storytelling which was fine and interesting as I’m interested in the concept of Eastern philosophy but didn’t completely keep me immersed in the storyline I felt like it had the opposite effect I forgot I was meant to care about the big reveal and I wasn’t invested in any of them enough to care about any of them befalling a bad ending. The book is rich in texture, and although the book centres around a bunch of problematic teen girls it’s far from a “light” read, there’s much to take from and consider, a good book to stretch out and savour for those brief moments of inspiration, it’s kind of weird and kind of cool, it possibly tries too hard to be different and deep or whatever but for all the hype I felt at the beginning it didn’t deliver what I felt it initially promised.